This is just a thought-out idea... would still need tweaking and whatnot by balance experts. Great benefits to roles based on archtype which strengthen based on character level, but with constant Contamination regulation. I might be willing to delve into the code to create it, if it has a positive vibe, and I can get some direction on tweaking values.

Special creation property: Select Beast from ElephantYakHound

Race becomes either Werephant, Wereyak, or Werewolf.

A bit of 'flavor text' for the races...

Werephant: Large and strong people in human form. When transformed, their size prevent focusing magical energies but their trunk allows item manipulation.

Wereyak: Magically inclined individuals in human form. When transformed, their strength lies in attacking through their magical focus.

Werewolf: Crafty people in human form. When transformed, they can close the gap quickly and shred their prey.

In human form: Human AptitudesSpecial Ability: TransformrSilver- and rSteel- (silver always applies bonus, steel provides +60% instead of +30% damage)rMut (very resistant to mutations, due to innate weirdness)Mut (their innate weirdness also cumulates in the form of contamination.. too high and it may still overcome rMut)

In animal form:Three flavors, see below. To sum it up, Werephants become strong melee machines capable of wielding weapons; Wereyaks become very strong casters; and Werewolves become deadly assasins. Retain susceptibilities.rMut and Mut are removed (their innate weirdness is being channeled)Cannot change back on their own, has to time out.

The Transform ability will cause the player to shapeshift into a beast, determined by race and level. When applied, it changes aptitudes, so recalculates levels during shift (sort of like Ashenzari's ability to move XP, only its moving from itself to itself, under a new apt). All xp applied to skills remains where it is, so some skills will see a boost, others a decline. Will not allow skills to exceed 27 or drop below 0. Requires magical contamination to activate, and consumes all magical contamination in the process. Once in their beast form, it lasts for a duration based on the consumed contamination. Perhaps even force it to occur if the user does incur some mutation... preventing too much Contamination storage.

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From level 1-10:The player will transform into either an Elephant, Yak, or Hound.

Yak (magic archtype):Fighting -2Dodge +2Stabbing -2All magic skills +2Movement speed increased a little.Weapons and Armor melded, become Teeth and Hooves.Cannot evoke items. Less HP and AC, less Damage, a small EV buff, and a substantial bonus to MP compared to human form.

Hound (stealth archtype):Fighting +2Unarmed Combat +2Weapon Skills -4Stealth +2Dodge +3Stabbing +3All Magic: -2Weapons and Armor melded, become Teeth and Claws. Cannot evoke items. About the same HP and AC, a little less Damage, a little more EV, and ability to 'Take Down'.Take Down - Moves to adjacent square from 2 tiles away, applies 'backstab', usable only on monsters who are not aware of the player.

Death YakFighting -3Dodge +3All Magic +3Movement increased a little more. A little more EV, and a 5% bonus to magic strength compared to Yak.

War DogFighting and Unarmed combat +3Stealth +3Dodge +4Stabbing +4All Magic -3A little more HP, a little more Damage, and a little more EV than Hound. Take Down increases to 3 tiles.

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From level 21-27

HellephantFighting and Unarmed +4Stealth and EV becomes 0A lot more HP and AC than Dire ElephantAbility to wield 2 handed weapons.Gain ability TrampleTrample: Expects an enemy adjacent, moves player to opposite side of enemy and causes damage. Requires ability to travel over both squares.

Wolf:Fighting and Unarmed +4Stealth +4All Magic -4, additional increased difficulty in casting spells. A little more HP, a little more Damage, a little more EV than a War Dog. Movement speed increased to just below a Spriggan.Any attack causing more than some percentage of damage to player causes unpreventable berserk with very short exhaustion and no after-slow. Still limited to Teeth and Claws with no evoking.

Merit aside, this sounds incredibly hard to test/balance. You are giving wayyyyy too many abilities, forms, and uniqueness to one species. Now, lets get to the outlandish stuff:

The caster species melds equipment, including weapon. No caster would find this desirable. Transmutations (which encompasses melding equipment) are for melee-strong characters.Werewolves get a movement ability that should not be unique to a species. Then they get an unavoidable berserk that has almost no drawbacks. For some reason, at some point, they are totally unable to evoke items. This is the "stealth" build, but the weapon becomes melded?The elephant gives knockback, which has all sorts of problems on its own that have been discussed to death, resulting in where we are today: no player species has knockback, and when/if it is implimented, it will likely not be species-specific.

There is so much here, and most of it is unrealistic.

seattle washington. friends for life. mods hate on me and devs ignore my posts. creater of exoelfs and dc:pt

@twelve: Dragon form already has trample. It's a mixed blessing. On one hand, you might shove yourself out of your defensive position. On the other hand, you can push your way through a crowd if, for whatever reason, you can't blink/teleport.

@suggetion: Some thoughts and questions.

Why an elephant and why a yak? And why does the Elephant slow down when in-game Elephants are all normal movement speed? And why is the Yak magical when nothing about them in-game are magical? And why do they completely shift to an entirely different species?

Aptitudes should stay the same throughout leveling and when swapping forms. Changing them as you level up and transform is too complicated.

Felids have no issue evoking, except Wands. Why are Wolves and Yaks unable to evoke anything at all when Felids can?

Hellephants have a fire breathing attack, why do these not have it?

Stabbing without a short blade is pretty weak, making Wolves kind of pointless. The Wolf tree should also have Felid movespeed the whole time.

All of them should have good Transmutation apts.

Personally, I think scrapping the Elephant and the Yak, which both seem silly, and reworking with the Wolf to make a werewolf species who can shift into a quadrupedal or bipedal at will (Not both, and perhaps involuntarily at times) could result in something interesting.

The best strategy most frequently overlooked by new players for surviving: not starting a fight to begin with.

My thoughts are 'if I could come up with an ideal that covers everything'. Yes, I understand that its probably way more work to balance than face value.

The knockback effect could easily be changed to the trample ability. Regarding melded weaponry on stealth, felids have 'teeth and claws' and can backstab with them.

I wouldn't be adverse to changing them all such that instead of being a mostly-beast, they instead become an anthropomorphic hybrid during their change, which would allow weapons to continue to be used... perhaps just meld armor into their 'beastly' state.

The ability changes can be toned way down so its less drastic, again, I was shooting for 'this type of functionality is what I would like to see' not necessarily 'this is what I insist on seeing'.

If I rewrote the design to be human<->anthropomorphic beast, changed it so that elephants got, hypothetically, +5% hp, +10% ac, -50% -ev, fighting +2, dodge -4 and the trample ability... then scaling it over changes; the yaks getting -5% hp, -10% ac, +10% ev, +25% mp, wizardry ring effect, spellcasting +4, elementals +2; and wolves +20% ev, felid level speed, stealth +2, stabbing +4, take down ability (limited to 1 space between).. and scaled everything based on transformation level... what do you think? (A lot less involved... and could scale, say, elephant hp and ac, perhaps a small bonus to damage; scale yak ev and mp and elementals; then scale wolf ev and stealth.. far less to balance.)

Now, bear in mind my effort to provide a drawback comes from requirement to manage Contamination. When not transformed it always increases, requires it to change, eats all of it in the process, and the altered form is turn based around it. If ignored, it will affect the user anyway and eventually cause random mutations and unexpected transformations. The way I worked it out, you could manage it quite well and have it ready for any fight, but you're going to burn a LOT of turns in the process.. if you added herbivore and carnivore in there, it'd make food another concern. Trying to use it as soon as it pops up would mean it won't have a very long effect. Could even go so far as to exhaust the player, and prevent building contamination after a transformation so they have to plan when its used.

Sure, I wouldn't mind breaking it down to simply a wolf. Was trying to offer some sort of DCSS flavor to the class. Elephants, yaks, and hounds are three animal genus that have more than two entries... which most adventurers come across during their travels in one form or another. I'll return to the drawing board and see about a single class based around human<->wolf.

Felids can stab with their claws and such, but they suck at it because it's unarmed stabbing. Stabbing is only particularly useful with short blades, ideally a dagger, since they get far greater damage bonuses for the stab, dagger especially.

Now that I think of it, anthropomorphic forms would cause less overlap with the Transmutations school, which, aside from Statue and Lich forms, are all animal forms (not counting the non-full transformation spells), which is something that was at the edge of my mind earlier. It'd also cause less overlap with the God of the Wilds if it ever got implemented, or at least the version without ally support.

Now when you're doing forms, are you boost aptitudes or skills directly? If you're doing the former, this will result in lots of weirdness in leveling skills and cause people to try to game when they train what based on when they're in what form while their current skills would be unaffected. But if you directly modify the skill, that'll have a bigger impact than you think, especially on top of the other bonuses. I'd just stick with the more direct bonuses, such as wizardry and HP modifications. It's much simpler and it'd be easier to tweak. Could even have their forms such have innate mutations that get stronger as you level up and are suppressed when in human form instead of having multiple forms.

Using glow as a drawback and a way to instant dump it has problems. First, the slow glow accumultation. If it's fast enough you can hit yellow on your own, it'll likely get tedious. If it doesn't, then it won't matter unless you're casting glow-inducing buffs, but not everyone does that. Second, being able to ditch all your glow when going into a form opens a can wide for abuse. Players could, and they would, be able to cast Haste and Controlled Blink well into red glow and then dump it all by going were-form before they have to pay the consequences. If you put in Carnivore and Herbivore, keep in mind Carnivore would trivialize the food clock. Meanwhile, Herbivore would make the food clock hurt... a lot.

I think it might be better to just let them shift at will with some advantages to being human and some to being in form, but stacked in a way you'll want both. Or they should be forced into forms against their will. For example, you offer them having inherent rMut. Why not instead of doing plain old rMut, sometimes getting hit with a mutating attacks forcibly shifts their form? Or have them drop into were-form when tension goes up and drop back into human when it goes down?

For various animal types, there's a lot more with more than two. In no particular order, off the top of my head, there's...

Of course, not all of these would be fitting for a were-creature (although Frogs do get bonus points for a magic role thanks to Prince Ribbit). However, I have heard of were-rats, -bears, and -lizards before. So, there's some other options there if you want to stick to the multiple were-forms route and the criteria of exists in Crawl.

Also, I still have to ask, why Yaks for the magic role?

The best strategy most frequently overlooked by new players for surviving: not starting a fight to begin with.

I think without being a completely new race, the concept of a werewolf could be used very well as:

a) A new mutation or set of mutationsb) One of the effects of a revised wand of polymorph (see wiki discussion about it causing temporary forms when used against the player)c) A new unique

(And possibly all three of the above!)

I think the race concept whilst interesting lacks something unique that will really define the werewolf's playstyle. Compare for instance vampires, whose form is centered around an entirely new hunger mechanic. What are werewolfs offering that will really mix things up? Condense your idea down to a really interesting core gameplay concept and you might find something that will grab people!

For the record: I chose yaks for magic since the cato petrify had been a problem for me in a few games.

Since this is a 'major race' in mythology, I'd love to see it implemented in one form or another, and there's so many choices for beasts in DCSS, I'd like to see it implemented in a way that lets the DCSS flavor come through.

As per Glow, I was meaning Contamination, not Glow. I wouldn't be adverse to an entirely new mechanic that doesn't allow toying with the systems in place, I was just trying to approach it from an angle reusing as much as possible while still creating something unique. I saw Contamination management as a way to provide a buff to something in late game for having to spend a lot of your early game dealing with an always-running-out timer. The way I was looking at it... if you don't manage it, you'll get random mutations and be forced into form, and dump contamination. If you manage it, you will 'enough' for fights. Sort of like a Troll's stomach eats a lot of Troll turns, I'd like to see it eat a lot of turns to manage (but with minimal effort from user, just transform, and if you need to wait it out you wait it out). The original concept was based around 'you get very powerful, for a very brief time, with some major drawbacks, and must wait to return to that state'.

I'd love to see this as a unique race and agree, it needs a solid direction that people agree on. Once that direction is laid out, I'm more than willing to do the programming for it.

I didn't want to include dragons in Were forms since not only are there draconians, there's also dragon form. Spiders and bats are also covered with transformation spells or abilities. Half-snake and Half-horse are covered in Naga and Centaur. Pure aquatics (fish) would be problematic since they should die on land. Anything with high poison (bee and ant lines) can potentially be very unbalancing just based on venom.

From your list and mine, that leaves:Rats, Frogs, Worms, Beetles, Bears, Lizards, Elephants, Yaks, HoundsRats are problematic in that they all have fairly low hp (except for a few lab rats... ouch)

So, Frogs, Worms, Beetles, Bears, Lizards, Elephants, Yaks, HoundsTo prevent needing to do a ton of tweaking come balance time, I was hoping to see 3 (or MAYBE 4) chosen as potentials.

Hounds are a defacto requirement for the werewolf fans, due to the 'wolf'. So then choosing 2 or 3 from Frogs, Worms, Beetles, Bears, Lizards, Elephants, Yaks

The two that have caused the most 'terror' in me in DCSS are elephants and yaks. Wandering into a pack of elephants while running away from something else, then getting caught in a tunnel, or accidentally blundering into the death yak pack in L:8... yeah.... I could see Frogs or even Lizards added. Bears I don't see all that often, mostly just the 'den' in Lair that has a couple.

To provide uniqueness, I'd really like to see a transformation mechanic. Human in one form, and the other I'm not adverse to a 'pure beast' or a hybrid beast. Hybrid would still allow weaponry, but if that route is chosen, then they need a LOT less bonus since they have weaponry. I would want to at least take armor away (meld), to prevent JUST buffing the character.

Regarding weapons themselves, what about 'melding' the weapons in such a way as you get some of the benefit of it during attacks? Like if you're wearing a +9/+9 fire branded weapon, your claws are extra hard and cause burns? Since the way I was looking at doing the transformation, you'd be forced into whatever you have only during the transformation duration, and will be able to switch after coming out of it. A new check could be added to the backstab routine to take this into account.

There are a lot of ideas here, it's really to see what the important mechanics are, and more importantly how this species is different from any Transmuter, other than having less choice (a Tm gets to choose their spell progression!)

You say the original concept is "'you get very powerful, for a very brief time, with some major drawbacks, and must wait to return to that state".

How is that any different from Berserk?

Regarding flavour. I'm not really sure what you mean by "letting Crawl flavour come through". Crawl's flavour comes through whenever you play the game, you don't need to shoehorn it into the design of a race. "Werewolf" is already flavour enough, it's a classic myth dating back to Ancient Greece, an era that a lot of Crawl's flavour gets borrowed from anyway! I think werefrog/wereyak/wererat just seems kind of bizarre and overly complex. Maybe some of your ideas would actually work better as a general "shape shifter" species ... but then the question will still be "how does this play differently to any Transmuter?" And the answer "exactly the same except kess control" doesn't really seem like a fun or interesting change on its own.

Using Contam as a mechanic is an interesting proposal, but it will ultimately just end up annoying having to micro-manage an actually quite dangerous status effect, especially early game.

No species has a subspecies selection screen, and that is the way things should stay. If they are differentiated enough that they should all be options (which is, frankly, unlikely), then they should be separate species. Failing that, I would much prefer to see an idea for a single, carefully-thought-out werebeast than many ones thrown out there because you feel like there should be options.

I really like the idea of werewolves in general, and would love to see them added to Crawl simply because I find them cool. I would not, however, like to see them added for no reason except to have them. They need to be able to fill a unique niche that does not feel gimmicky, and that is a difficult proposition. mumra articulated several problems fairly well.

Regarding weapons...no other form gets "half-weapon" effects, and that is the way it should stay. Unarmed is already very powerful; one of the drawbacks is that you cannot brand or enchant your hands. Removing that drawback is not a good idea, nor does it make a whole lot of sense flavour-wise -- what you suggest would be basically turning your weapon into part of your body.

It would work nicely as a mutation gained by being attacked by or eating the chunks of a werewolf monster.

Make the transformation work on a clock to simulate the full moon, after you've survived the transformation a few times make the transformation an ability. Once it becomes an ability it doesn't remove the clock but simply resets it when you use the ability.

To differentiate it from beserk you make the transformation noisy and take a few turns. So it's not so much a panic button.

Being a werewolf would probably be like being a hairy unarmed troll monk. High regen and metabolism, attacking with claws and fangs. No casting or evoking and limit by the food clock, once you're starving or near starving you turn back into your normal form. Also even if your base species can't eat meat you probably want to be able to as a werewolf. Also eating food in your inventory could be banned whilst a werewolf so that you either have to eat beforehand or eat what you kill.

naughty wrote:It would work nicely as a mutation gained by being attacked by or eating the chunks of a werewolf monster.

Firstly, gaining any specific intrinsics from eating chunks is firmly on the developers' "will not do" list. It's actually just not very interesting in terms of gameplay and balance. Additionally, having it happen as a result of being attacked doesn't sound like much fun.

naughty wrote:Make the transformation work on a clock to simulate the full moon, after you've survived the transformation a few times make the transformation an ability. Once it becomes an ability it doesn't remove the clock but simply resets it when you use the ability.

What's stopping the player hiding in the temple and letting the transformation time out? It's not much fun, but it means it won't impact your game.

In wider terms of how this would affect Crawl: for characters that don't want it, it's very hard to make sure that you never get attacked by the thing, it'll be incredibly annoying, but they can mitigate the effects as above. For characters that want it (or where it's actually a really good survival option) they will make sure they get bitten by a werewolf as soon as possible. The net result is that suddenly a significant portion of wins will be with a werewolf-infected character. Then it's no longer a cool, unique or rare event.

I could definitely see it as another random mutation, perhaps with multiple levels. The mutations system is already very interesting and varied, and it's very balanced because you have a lot of mutations with both good and bad effects (like this one), but you can't game the system to get just the specific mutation you want.

Being a werewolf would probably be like being a hairy unarmed troll monk. High regen and metabolism, attacking with claws and fangs. No casting or evoking and limit by the food clock, once you're starving or near starving you turn back into your normal form. Also even if your base species can't eat meat you probably want to be able to as a werewolf. Also eating food in your inventory could be banned whilst a werewolf so that you either have to eat beforehand or eat what you kill.

Why no casting? Why the restrictions on eating? It will help you to self-analyse your ideas if you try and go into more detail on the intended gameplay effect of a suggestion. The only gameplay effect you've described is "like being a hairy unarmed troll monk". So ... what's the point of spending non-trivial hours or days coding this feature, when you can already play a TrMo any time you like?

Firstly, gaining any specific intrinsics from eating chunks is firmly on the developers' "will not do" list. It's actually just not very interesting in terms of gameplay and balance. Additionally, having it happen as a result of being attacked doesn't sound like much fun.

That's a fair complaint about it. The idea was to allow player agency in whether they got the mutation or not. The normal crawl methods for agency would be a new species, potion, god or Transmutation spell but those options seemed a bit weak or overkill. Making it just another mutation barely makes it worth the effort unless you go Jivya and class it as a good mutation.

What's stopping the player hiding in the temple and letting the transformation time out? It's not much fun, but it means it won't impact your game.

You could do that but the werewolf form would:a) Only stop when you're starving so you'll start running low on perma-food, and chunks outside the temple are a finite resources.b) Trigger after certain periods of time (say 2000-5000 turns), which the player cannot perfectly guess, so it only solves the problem if they're very near the temple when the transformation happens. It would be easy to balance the time between forced transformations to make the 'hide in the temple' strategy unfeasible.c) You could try and always run low on satiation but because the transformation is noisy it won't be possible to pull that off for too long.

Why no casting? Why the restrictions on eating?

Well the restrictions are only when in werewolf form and intended to balance against being a temporary, melee powerhouse. It's also in flavour, werewolves seem to be about ripping things apart and eating them not casting spells and eating packed lunches. The eating while in werewolf form restriction is also intended to make eating before changing a tactical choice, especially in areas corpses are rare and you can't top up the food clock to extend werewolf form.

I actually went into a great deal of detail in a previous post but I lost it when I was logged out for taking too long to type it :^)

The Hairy Troll Monk was unexplained shorthand needs more explaining:- Fangs and Claws unarmed melee only.- High Regen.- High Metabolism (vital if you use the food clock as the form timer).

Firstly, gaining any specific intrinsics from eating chunks is firmly on the developers' "will not do" list. It's actually just not very interesting in terms of gameplay and balance. Additionally, having it happen as a result of being attacked doesn't sound like much fun.

That's a fair complaint about it. The idea was to allow player agency in whether they got the mutation or not. The normal crawl methods for agency would be a new species, potion, god or Transmutation spell but those options seemed a bit weak or overkill. Making it just another mutation barely makes it worth the effort unless you go Jivya and class it as a good mutation.

The point of it being a mutation means the player can't choose to take it, so it'll stay as a really unique and fun event in the rare games where it happens. You don't want to have a mutation as a choice a player can make - that opens a pandora's box of questions like "why can't I become a vampire when one bites me?" I agree that a Tmut spell would be a bad idea, being in complete control of the transformation just doesn't jive with the whole idea of a werewolf!

On the other hand, Crawl doesn't usually tend to go with the whole "popular opinion" thing when it comes to interpreting classical myths. From the Wikipedia article it seems that one of the oldest references to a Werewolf is Lycaon, a king of Arcadia, who was turned permanently into a wolf by Zeus. So another interpretation could be to add some sort of "wolf god" who either gradually makes you more and more wolf-like, or gives you a form ability, and/or randomly transforms you.

naughty wrote:

What's stopping the player hiding in the temple and letting the transformation time out? It's not much fun, but it means it won't impact your game.

You could do that but the werewolf form would:a) Only stop when you're starving so you'll start running low on perma-food, and chunks outside the temple are a finite resources.b) Trigger after certain periods of time (say 2000-5000 turns), which the player cannot perfectly guess, so it only solves the problem if they're very near the temple when the transformation happens. It would be easy to balance the time between forced transformations to make the 'hide in the temple' strategy unfeasible.c) You could try and always run low on satiation but because the transformation is noisy it won't be possible to pull that off for too long.

Permafood isn't really in such short of a supply in most games. Also ending the transformation when hungry doesn't really add up - I would have thought when starving you're more likely to turn into a ravenous beast. Instead you could end the transformation after a certain number of meals - i.e. a small chance to change back each time you eat something you killed.

naughty wrote:

Why no casting? Why the restrictions on eating?

Well the restrictions are only when in werewolf form and intended to balance against being a temporary, melee powerhouse. It's also in flavour, werewolves seem to be about ripping things apart and eating them not casting spells and eating packed lunches. The eating while in werewolf form restriction is also intended to make eating before changing a tactical choice, especially in areas corpses are rare and you can't top up the food clock to extend werewolf form.

I would suggest "Carnivore 3" instead of restricting just to chunks. This makes more logical sense and is less confusing for players in a game where the food clock is already a source of annoyance for some!

Preventing spellcasting is horrible for any character that's a primary spellcaster, especially if you're cutting off other ranged options like wands! Perhaps a spellcasting penalty would be kinder, and restricting wands/rods makes sense and is in line with Felids.

naughty wrote:I actually went into a great deal of detail in a previous post but I lost it when I was logged out for taking too long to type it :^)

Ouch whenever I write a long post I try to remember to do "Ctrl-A Ctrl-C" before I hit submit - so it's saved on the clipboard if anything like that happens (internet problems, someone resetting the router, etc.)

naughty wrote:The Hairy Troll Monk was unexplained shorthand needs more explaining:- Fangs and Claws unarmed melee only.- High Regen.- High Metabolism (vital if you use the food clock as the form timer).

Oh, I understood what you meant. My question was: "If that's the end result, why not just play a Troll Monk to begin with?" I would be looking for ways to distinguish the idea from TrMo rather than drawing parallels ....

I think I muddied the waters by mentioning mutations. The idea was just to copy the idea that being a werewolf is a disease, rather than a species. Mutations are just the closest analogue in crawl.

The reverting when starving is the weakest part of the idea flavour wise I'd agree. The transformation needs time limiting somehow and I think it's more interesting to be something that the player can make choices about. Maybe extending it every time you make a kill would make more sense.

I actually wrote carnivore 3 in my lost post :^)

Also it's distinguished from TrMo by being temporary. You could be a caster and a werewolf but werewolf form would play like an extended beserk.

naughty wrote:I think I muddied the waters by mentioning mutations. The idea was just to copy the idea that being a werewolf is a disease, rather than a species. Mutations are just the closest analogue in crawl.

The reverting when starving is the weakest part of the idea flavour wise I'd agree. The transformation needs time limiting somehow and I think it's more interesting to be something that the player can make choices about. Maybe extending it every time you make a kill would make more sense.

I actually wrote carnivore 3 in my lost post :^)

Also it's distinguished from TrMo by being temporary. You could be a caster and a werewolf but werewolf form would play like an extended beserk.

This last thing is the biggest problem - berserkitis is already a nightmare for casters, but at least you can generally avoid the effect by not meleeing anything, and when it does trigger it's thankfully only short-lived!

Note: I was writing this post before I saw the Ravenous God thread. Personally I think the God idea works better than a species or mutation. But this is what I was going to reply with anyway

Instead of regeneration which, as you point out, is already the Troll's gimmick, how about capitalizing on another aspect of wolves - smell. So when in wereform you can "see" a trail left behind wherever any monster has recently walked. Some monsters / uniques might even have a particularly pungent aroma which you can recognise.

From a development point of view, this would have to be implemented as a mutation anyway, because that's Crawl's way of applying permanent status effects. You could flavour it as "something different" and make it work differently than all other mutations, i.e. immune to Cure Mut. But I don't see why you'd want or need to. It's interesting enough as a "sometimes good, sometimes bad" mutation - changing a well-known core mechanic will only cause problems, and if the player has literally no way to cure the status then it could be completely game-breaking for some builds.

The problem with "making a kill extends the transformation" is the same - this implies you can just wait it out somewhere safe. Whereas my suggestion "each kill has a chance to end the transformation" - well, that encourages you to take action and kill things (the activity of trying to separate a monster from a group to pick them off on their own also seems quite wolf-like).